The United States is a nation facing a profound and fundamental decision - Who are we going to be? The greatest threat to America's enduring legacy of self-determination, self-reliance, and personal responsibility is the people themselves. The crux of our democratic republic is an active, informed, and responsible citizenry. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." - Wendell Phillips

Saturday, November 3, 2012

Benghazi - Defining Obama

On August 9, 1974, Richard Nixon resigned as President of
the United States. This is the only time in
American history that has ever happened, and it was the result of a sitting president
actively participating in a government cover-up. An elected leader knowingly attempted to
mislead the American people and was appropriately forced from office, forever
tarnished with a legacy of shame. Though our partisan media has made every
effort to mute the tragedy that occurred in Benghazi, Libya and many have been
reluctant to officially proclaim it, let us finally acknowledge this situation
for what it is - a government cover-up. This
situation could not have come at a worse time for President Obama, politically inconvenient
is an understatement. Ironically though,
Benghazi and the subsequent handling of it is a microcosm of the Obama administration’s
almost four years in power. Contradiction,
arrogance, secrecy, and deflection of blame are staples of the Obama presidency,
and have been quite prevalent in the handling of this incident.

The weeks following the Benghazi bloodshed were filled with
the Obama machine making every effort to blame the eruption of anti-American violence
in the Middle East on a little known YouTube video. The State Department apologized for the
video, President Obama referenced it multiple times in his United Nation's address, and they
ultimately drove the point home by having the video’s creator taken into custody
on a parole violation. When information
slipped out revealing the Benghazi actions not as a spontaneous riot, but a well-planned
and precisely executed attack by terrorist elements associated with Al Qaeda,
the ardent certainty about the video motivation morphed into righteous indignation. Even with a chorus of increasingly substantiated
charges of incompetence and deception, the White House maintained an air of defiance. Hypocrisy reached previously unknown heights
when Obama actually tried to claim during the second presidential debate that he
labeled the Benghazi incident a terrorist attack during his Rose Garden remarks
on September 12th. Obama is
far from unintelligent, so he covered his bases by simply mentioning terrorist
attacks in passing, knowing at some point he could reference it if the truth
happened to rear its ugly head. It would
then be up to the spin doctors to work their magic and twist the dismissal of
repeated attacks on western diplomatic assets, unheeded intelligence reports predicting
an impending attack, and ignored pleas for additional security that ultimately resulted
in the deaths of four Americans into a political witch hunt by Republicans. While logic would predict this to be a ludicrous
strategy based on the overwhelming amount of damning evidence, the lack of
damage sustained by the Obama presidency and campaign seems to prove
otherwise. One president is forced from
office for perpetrating a cover-up; another is very possibly going to be
reelected. My how times and our
standards have changed.

Obama is a man convinced of his own greatness, and he
becomes indignant with anyone that has the audacity to question him or
challenge his ideology. The facts do not
apply to him, his superiority defies them.
While foreign policy was a weakness for him in 2008, he saw and was
campaigning on it as his crown jewel this time around. He was America’s great avenger for the elimination
of Bin Laden and several of his lieutenants.
The Middle East was now fertile ground for blossoming democracy and the
era of fanaticism was soon to be a thing of the past. We were safer and more secure. With drones and SEALs he had single-handedly dealt
the death blow to jihad. Suddenly an
American ambassador is killed for the first time in over three decades, an
organized attack is conducted on the anniversary of 9/11, and a group
supposedly in its finally throes is now expanding in the power vacuum we
helped to create through our “liberation” of Libya. The carefully crafted image was proving to be
a house of cards. The supposed results
of Obama’s supreme foreign policy were proving to be delusions of
grandeur. For an administration already
thin on a record supporting their claims of transcendency this was simply not
acceptable. Being proved wrong or
incompetent was not permissible, so even though all evidence to the contrary,
it had to be the YouTube video. If the
message was uniform and relentlessly pitched, combined with a sympathetic media
and a generally unaware electorate, the hope was to lay the blame on a violent
reaction to a religiously insensitive video. Perhaps disaster would not only be adverted,
but transformed into a rallying point or at the very least quickly go
away. As long as the president’s
reputation on foreign affairs remained intact, either would suffice. This administration had learned from their
experience with the Fast and Furious fiasco, when the truth is detrimental it becomes
a matter of tweaking or concealing. If
that fails, make it a war of attrition.
People get bored very easily.

As far as Obama was concerned, this was nothing more than a
distraction to the more important task of getting reelected. One must have their priorities. As a man that had finely honed an ability to
be impervious to accountability his entire life, he knew how to shift
blame. His time as president was an
exercise in finger pointing. Almost four
years in office and yet the lack of positive results from his policies were
still his predecessor’s fault. When the initial
recipient of blame for this situation was discredited, an alternate had to be
found. Since the video was out, the next
option offered up, though tactfully discreet, was the inherent danger
associated with diplomatic service. Since
the victims understood and accepted the hazards of their chosen profession, the
fault lay not with an incompetent and misleading administration but with an unfortunate
albeit unavoidable bit of bad luck. They
willing went into harm’s way, so their fate was of their choosing.

It is quite frustrating and completely unacceptable that the
Benghazi tragedy has not and continues to not receive the attention and scrutiny
it deserves. This is a perpetuation of
this administration’s belief it is above reproach, to question it is heresy. President Obama is predicable because his primary
concern is himself, so much so that even with four dead Americans the focus
with the Benghazi attack has been to figure out how to minimize the damage it
does to his reelection efforts. Why it
happened, what lessons should be learned from it, and relentlessly pursuing
those that perpetrated this attack must be dismissed in an effort to try and
make it all go away. Pesky governing got
in the way of this president’s true passion –campaigning. President
Obama did not have the experience or leadership to properly deal with this
situation, just as he did not have the experience or leadership necessary to be
President of the United States. He was
completely unprepared to deal with the realities that emerged when the façades he
had worked so hard to erect were exposed, and in both situations it was the
American people that bore the brunt of his failure.

How fitting that the Obama campaign has recently released a
commercial centered on the importance of character. While this is a rare time when I actually
agree with them, I find it absurd that this administration would have the gall to
venture into this territory. Character
is a vital ingredient in an elected leader as democracy is the ultimate exercise
in trust. We place confidence in our
elected leaders when we vote them into power.
When this trust is violated, and the bestowed power is corrupted in an
effort to deprive us of the truth, our representative form of government is circumvented,
replaced by tyrants elevating their own needs above those of the country. Character is not an attribute that I would
associate with this administration’s handling of the Benghazi incident, or
their methods of governing over the last four years. Contradiction, arrogance, secrecy, and deflection
of blame are not admirable or noble qualities, but they are the epitome of this
president and his four years in office.

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